


goodbye souvenir

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: Childhood, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 09:07:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11483157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: It feels like the logical thing to do. Right, too. The same way it makes him feel to see Tatsuya with his father’s keepsake lighter, traded in exchange for the watch that’s too big and a little heavy and glinting silver in Jun’s hands.





	goodbye souvenir

“We won’t be like that when we grow up, will we?”

The question leaves his mouth as soon as the man disappears from sight, stumbling his way past a corner lit by a flickering streetlamp.

Jun doesn’t know why he asks, but it feels like the logical thing to do. Right, too. The same way it makes him feel to see Tatsuya with his father’s keepsake lighter, traded in exchange for the watch that’s too big and a little heavy and glinting silver in Jun’s hands.

The light shining through the display case housing white dresses and red roses sharpens all the nooks and crannies of the old watch: all the places it’s worn and scratched and blemished with age. It’s bright, and when Jun squints he can see the dial lines, how they’re only now starting to fade. They’ll disappear eventually, he thinks, vanishing long before the hands themselves stop ticking. And then he remembers the words carved upon his father’s lighter, and smiles: something muted and small and kept to himself. He knows Tatsuya understands that, too.

When Jun looks up from his hands and turns around, Tatsuya’s expression remains unchanged— he’s always been a stoic boy— but then he shakes his head, briefly but decisively, and that’s that for his answer. It’s funny sometimes how Tatsuya can put so much meaning behind his gestures. Jun thinks of how Tatsuya doesn’t say “yes” when a nod would suffice, doesn’t waste his breath on a biting retort when his fist would be content to talk for him.

How he never bothers to speak of his feelings or his thoughts when he could more easily reach out his hand across the space between them when the others are out of sight, unconcerned about dirt and dust from an evening of play, and slide his fingers in the gap between Jun’s, knowing without even a shadow of a doubt that Jun would understand. And of course he would, for between the two of them there was never much need for words, and if that was the way Tatsuya liked then Jun was content with it as well.

That’s the way they’ve always been, he realizes, at the same time a part of him feels the urge to make an exception, just this once. In the too-bright light of the store and without the plastic red of his mask Tatsuya looks— warmer, somehow, his face softer around the edges where it’s framed by auburn hair. Jun almost flushes, almost glances down, but he doesn’t look away, even as the urge continues to gnaw at him, forces him to take step forward and towards Tatsuya.

“Tatsuya,” he starts.

Jun has a vague idea of what adulthood entails: anger, disillusionment, sacrifices. The world of grownups is full of resignation. Even if they don’t leave such a world unscathed, Jun wishes for his friendship with Tatsuya to remain. In what form, he doesn’t know— all he knows is that Tatsuya and him and the emotion he feels welling up inside his chest, right here and now, are things he never wishes to give up to the tides of time, to the crushing pressure of growing up.

Bravery sparks up within him, sudden and telling him to trudge onward, so he continues: “Promise me that— even when we’re grownups— you’ll never leave my side. Even after five years, or ten, or more than that… promise me we’ll always be together.”

To this, Tatsuya doesn’t answer straightaway. It's a lot to ask for. He grips tightly at the lighter, gaze cast aside to the glass display, towards the pallid lace and beribboned bouquets, and Jun knows that the warm color spreading across his face mimics the one he feels on his own.

A second passes. And then:

“I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> 29/09/17: still quite an iconic scene? i wish someone else had written/posted this.


End file.
